Bill Carle is up bright and early at the Pahaska Tepee Gift Shop and Café on Lookout Mountain, doing the job he’s been doing at several gift shops around the state for decades – setting up merchandise.
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“I see an empty spot on a shelf, but I see no empty shelves, and I've been selling at half price now for a week,” he said. “It's just we have so much stuff, so much variety, something for everybody…every inch of our stores are packed to the rafters.”
It’s not your average gift shop. There are T-shirts and postcards and stickers, but there’s also fake gold flakes in a jar, home décor that reads “it’s wine ‘o clock somewhere”, and geodes with dinosaurs inside. Even the café, which serves fresh fudge and other treats, has several shelves of random toys and trinkets.
“We do the whole spectrum, and some people don't like the way we do that,” Carle said. “But I'm not trying to tell anybody what their experience should be.”
But Carle only gets to do this for a few more days. The lease for the gift shop and café ends on Dec. 31, ending nearly 50 years of he and his family operating the gift shop. The Buffalo Bill Museum, located next to the gift shop and not operated by Carle, will remain open in the new year.
“It's hard not to be emotional,” said Dustin Day, Carle’s nephew, who’s worked at the family gift shops since he was five. “For us, when you live there, it becomes part of your family. It's like losing a loved one.”
The Pahaska Tepee building is over 100 years old and was originally operated by Johnny Baker, the foster son of William F. Cody, or Buffalo Bill. Johnny and his wife Olive named the shop after Cody’s hunting lodge. When Johnny died, Olive operated the museum until the late 1950s, when Carle’s grandmother won a bid to run the shop. The family has been in a concession contract with the city ever since.
City data estimates more than 500,000 people visit the shop and the museum each year. Carle said many customers are devastated.
“You hear this from everybody that walks up to the counter, ‘I hear this place is closing, Why?’ ‘Well, I wish I could tell you,’” Carle said.
Carle said he received a letter in October 2023, stating that the city and county of Denver, which owns the building, need to evaluate the property and that there were “significant limitations” to do the evaluation with the building still open. Carle said that he and Day had a meeting with the city, but the conversation “went nowhere.”
“The sheer impression was their mind was made up, and this decision was about what they wanted to do versus what these buildings needed to be,” Day said. “These places were built for the people of Denver, but now they're built for the staff of Denver.”
Denver Mountain Parks’ master plan, which was published in 2008, states that the shop “lacks accessible restrooms and is run down.” Carle said there was a more recent pump failure at the museum, but there was not a full septic system failure.
The master plan also states that Pahaska Tepee and the Buffalo Bill museum “have the potential” to be a top-tier tourist attraction in Denver, but “every aspect of the campus needs evaluation.”
But Day said that once mom and pop shops die out and big organizations take over, that’s when places become “tourist traps.”
“There's no personal touch, it's all do yourself,” Day said. “They say, “We don’t care because we'll see the next tourist next year,’ and I think that mentality, that's really wrong with the tourism industry. We’ve made places where, you know, you’d come back more than once.”
This feeling isn’t new for Carle and Day. Carle’s family worked at Echo Lake Lodge near Mount Blue Sky, which was 98 years old. That was closed in 2022 due to a septic system failure. The building hasn’t been used since. Prior to that, his family worked at the gift shop on top of Pikes Peak but lost it in 1992 after being outbid by Aramark.
“The customer experience, I think, is never quite the same, and I think it's to the lesser extent,” Day said. “As much time, blood, sweat and tears we put into these places, to see them digress is what's really hurtful and troubling.”
Denver Parks and Recreation has recently released a statement on its website following the publicity of the gift shop closure, stating that the closure will be temporary and “will facilitate operational changes, reduce lodes impacting the building’s mechanical systems, and will provide access for historic preservation efforts.”
The master plan also states that improvements to the site will draw “dramatically more heritage tourists” – or those interested in historic or educational resources.
Carle said people can already experience that the minute they walk in the historic gift shop building – from the original bark on the tree siding to the vintage photos and paintings.
“What is the real historic treasure here? It doesn't have to be our family running these things, but you don't close a 100-year-old business,” he said. “Once they're gone, they're gone. You do not bring these things back. It's part of the fabric of the community. It's the source of civic pride.”
A worker of the Pahaska Tepee Gift Shop has created a physical petition for people to come and sign. Carle said it has received nearly 10,000 names and comments.
“There's not one comment in thousands and thousands of signatures of ‘Good job, Denver, it's about time you change this thing, this is dumb,’” he said. “It's always ‘Keep it.’ ‘I like it.’ ‘Best Ever.’”
In the coming days, Carle plans to clean out the shop and his personal belongings, as he lives above the gift shop. He recently bought Masonville Mercantile just west of Fort Collins and hopes to set it up more in the Spring.
But Carle is disappointed he has to close his doors on an experience he feels customers will not get at Lookout Mountain after changes are made.
“You want to spend some time there, even if it's in the gift shop. You don't want to just take your picture, turn around and walk away,” he said. “It’s a rug pull for so many people, and that’s the saddest part of all…It’s a bad decision that benefits no one.”
